Customer Lifetime Value is the key metric for customer experience-oriented businesses. Average Handle Time, Customer Satisfaction, and Cost to Serve all have their place, but in today’s modern service landscape, LTV—mainly driven by repeat business or subscription over time—has to take the top spot. This evolution is ongoing, and successful businesses need to master it.

If you want to run a successfully operating call center, efficiency is vital. Just ask any call center manager what’s their most important mission when it comes to managing the call center, and chances are they’ll tell you: it’s increasing efficiency.

We saw a lot of changes to the call center and customer experience landscape in 2018. Cloud communications and virtual agents were on the forefront of everyone’s minds, and social media was more important than ever. 2019 is shaping up to be the year of strategic thinking: better analytics, more intentional social media conversations and innovative ways to involve artificial intelligence.

The thousands-upon-thousands of conversations that pour into call centers worldwide every day contain priceless information. Everybody knows that. What’s a bit more difficult to know is how to extract hidden nuggets of knowledge in speech and turn them into practical information for customer-facing agents.

Your call center employees are very often the first employees your customers interact with. They are problem solvers, and they are the keys to driving innovation, knowledge, and revenue throughout your organization.